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Comment: This book has already been well loved by someone else and that love shows. It MIGHT have highlighting, underlining, be missing a dust jacket, or SLIGHT water damage, but over-all itâ?TMs still a good book at a great price! (if it is supposed to contain a CD or access code, that may be missing)

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Big Cats opens with "Charlotte," in which a young girl with a broken pelvis spies on her voluptuous neighbor during a long, hot summer night, setting the tone of irrepressible curiosity and yearning that is evident throughout the collection. In "Get Away from Me, David," a bank manager tries to overcome his haunted past as he deals with the aftermath of a minor earthquake and the body of a customer who died in the lobby. "Big Cats" pits two teenage girls against each other in an escalating catfight at the zoo where they work, culminating in a blowout in front of the lion cage.

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This Book Is Bound with "Deckle Edge" Paper
You may have noticed that some of our books are identified as "deckle edge" in the title. Deckle edge books are bound with pages that are made to resemble handmade paper by applying a frayed texture to the edges. Deckle edge is an ornamental feature designed to set certain titles apart from books with machine-cut pages. See a larger image.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

I loved the cover featuring a leopard half body shaped in female curves and coupled with the author's lovely name, this was indeed a tempting book which delivered its hidden promise.

This collection of short stories deals with outbursts of emotions. Feelings that have been bottled up under the surface and find a moment to explode, in many different ways. Reinhorn describes a host of characters, each one is a whole entity, a round character full of different angels and many inner wounds. The stories are all disturbing in this way or another and each one can be dealt with and analyzed in detail. This, by the way, is some of my frustration with such a rich book of short stories. Each story is a world of its own. I felt it is hard to read more then one story in a sitting as they are so strong, vivid and full.

In "F--- you", a woman in some kind of personal distress that is only hinted upon picks a young boy of the road, acting, as "she should" in normal motherly situations. But somehow, although her behavior starts as seemingly appropriate, the situation turns to be awkward when she finds herself outbursting in front of this boy in her back yard pool. She now has an audience to turn her frustrations against. Although the woman does not do anything really harmful, we feel her behavior deteriorating and her way of speech seems totally out of place. This story is quite uncomfortable to the reader as many of the "not do" rules of conduct are broken and you get a picture of a woman on the edge.

"Big Cats" gives us a minute-by-minute detail of an escalation of the relationship between two teenaged girls. As the story develops we learn that each one has her reasons to team up with the other.Read more ›

Don't be misled by the cover of this marvelous book, as one cranky reader was. Big Cats is no kittenish collection; it's a sly, stealthy, mordant, ferocious beast - and not for the faint of heart (though I expect even girlie lit fans with open minds and appetites for the rare will appreciate it).

Reinhorn's work has garnered praise from some of America's finest contemporary writers, including Pulitzer-winner Marilynne Robinson - and it's well deserved. Her stories dwell thoughtfully, relentlessly, with great care and quiet mercy, on outcasts and misfits, men and women on the verge and in the midst, at crucible moments of decision and transformation - minute dramas handled with subtlety and generosity, rendered in elegant, engergetic prose.

Readers of contemporary literary fiction are sure to admire Reinhorn's debut, and look forward to her next books.

Every once in a while a nugget of gold crops up in the short story collections published each year. My gold nugget is Big Cats by Holiday Reinhorn.

Reinhorn writes simply delicious dramas of "real life" and "real people" who are full-bodied, rich, multi-dimensional complex beings with complex stories. It is her talent that makes the complex, simple. She alternates between humor, sadness, poignancy and tenderness in a way that shouts out that she has developed her voice and speaks it with strength and commitment. I love the way her writing seeps into my consciousness and makes me live what she writes. Each story has its own drama to breathe life into the story, capturing its soul.

The title story, "Big Cats," of this collection is about two young girls who work at a zoo. They fight, attempting to be the "big cats" they aren't as yet. The author fixes her sights on the girls' minds and captures their spirit.

I love "My Name"! It is the story of a Vietnam vet who's lived in his own prison, so he understands and emphasizes with the catatonic woman he cares for and who calls him by her son's name. Though brief it is the connection the lonely man yearns for and is expressed with absolute tenderness.

Some years ago Reinhorn wrote the screenplay for the film Last Seen. Being familiar with the film it was wonderful to read the story that birthed it. It is about the mysterious disappearance of high school senior Jennifer Langsam.

Read the rest of Reinhorn's collection yourself. I don't want to give anything away. Read it and savor the flavors of life.

Big Cats is one of the most genuinely enjoyable collections of short stories I've encountered in a long time. It's... well... fun! I picked up a copy at random and found myself hooked. These are not "difficult" stories by any means, but neither are they anything close to "chick lit" (as the cover might suggest). Instead they are intriguing, thoughtful and surprisingly original. For example, "Charlotte", the opening story in which a girl with a broken pelvis spies on her neighbors has echoes of everything from "Rear Window" to "White Oleander" and yet it functions entirely on its own. The stories have remarkable structure and the action never digresses into rambling interior monologues. Thus a reader is well able to devour one in a short sitting.

Reinhart has a knack for voice and characterization in that all her characters, from young girls (for example, the titular and final tales) to Vietnam Vets ("My Name") to lonely, estranged women ("The White Dog" or "F--- You") resonate with the easer. Reinhorn manages to craft fascinatingly believable characters. In fact, I often found myself wanting to hear more about certain people. Perhaps some of these stories could become seeds for future novels, Ms. Reinhorn?

Perhaps the most striking thing about all these stories is the often startling realism both in terms of dialogue and descriptions. There is a degree clarity that renders reading these tales is a bit like watching short films in an art house theatre. You can almost cast and direct them in your head! That being said, each of these stories easily stands on its own as an engrossing tale of likable characters. It's more than a "summer read", but it really is a book to enjoy.